Purpose

Online social networks (OSNs) provide users with mechanisms such as social circles and individual selection to define the audiences (i.e., privacy policy) of the shared information. This privacy decision-making process is a hard and tedious task for users because they have to assess the cost-benefit in a complex environment. Moreover, little is known about how users assess the cost-benefit of matching the elements of online communication and their interests. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test a research model to understand the impact that the types of receivers and the sensitivity of messages have on privacy decisions.

Design/methodology/approach

A study was conducted to understand how users evaluate the cost-benefit of the disclosure action in online social networks for the different types of receivers identified and the sensitivity of the message. Data from 400 respondents was collected and analyzed using partial least squares modeling.

Findings

The findings of this study demonstrated a trade-off variance between the perceived cost-benefit and the disclosure of sensitive information with different receiver types. Disclosing personal information with trusted receivers, influencer receivers and receivers from the circle of coworkers had a positive significant effect on social capital building. Conversely, disclosing personal information with receivers from the circle of family or unknown receivers had a significant negative effect on social capital building and even a significant positive effect on privacy concerns.

Originality/value

Recent literature has documented the increasing interest of the research community in understanding users' concerns and interests in making the most suitable privacy decisions. However, most researchers have worked on understanding the disclosure action from a user-centered perspective and have not considered all of the elements of online communication. This study puts the focus on all of the elements of communication during disclosure actions, taking into account the properties of the message and receivers and the impact on users' cost benefit value.

中文翻译：

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“我应该授予谁访问我的帖子的权限？”：确定在线社交网络上最合适的隐私决策

目的

在线社交网络 (OSN) 为用户提供社交圈和个人选择等机制来定义共享信息的受众（即隐私政策）。这种隐私决策过程对用户来说是一项艰巨而乏味的任务，因为他们必须在复杂的环境中评估成本效益。此外，关于用户如何评估匹配在线交流元素和他们的兴趣的成本收益，我们知之甚少。因此，本文的目的是开发和测试一个研究模型，以了解接收者的类型和消息的敏感性对隐私决策的影响。

设计/方法/方法

进行了一项研究，以了解用户如何评估在线社交网络中针对已识别的不同类型接收者的披露行为的成本效益以及消息的敏感性。使用偏最小二乘模型收集和分析了 400 名受访者的数据。

发现

这项研究的结果表明，感知成本效益与不同接收者类型的敏感信息披露之间存在权衡差异。向可信赖的接收者、影响者接收者和来自同事圈的接收者披露个人信息对社会资本建设具有显着的积极影响。相反，向家庭圈子的接收者或未知接收者披露个人信息对社会资本建设有显着的负面影响，甚至对隐私问题有显着的积极影响。

原创性/价值

最近的文献记录了研究界越来越有兴趣了解用户的关注点和兴趣，从而做出最合适的隐私决策。然而，大多数研究人员致力于从以用户为中心的角度理解披露行为，并没有考虑在线交流的所有要素。本研究将重点放在披露行动期间的所有沟通要素上，同时考虑到消息和接收者的属性以及对用户成本收益价值的影响。